40+ Agency Tools You Need to Have in Your Tech Stack

When you’re working in an agency, there are many moving pieces to take care of.

Think about it… the marketing team generates leads to pass on to the sales team. The sales team pitches to the leads and closes them as customers. The finance team takes care of invoicing and makes sure that the client pays the bills.

Then the creative work starts. The account managers get the clients to complete the brief, and the marketing/digital experts collaborate on the actual project. Throughout the entire process, the account managers liaise with the clients and make sure everyone’s happy.

Phew. That’s a lot of workflows happening simultaneously, which means that a lot of things could go wrong.

To help you streamline and optimize your agency’s processes, I ’ve put together a list of 40+ must-have agency tools in this article. You’ll find marketing tools, support tools, and other tools that help you with smooth workflows, creative development, and more.

Ready? Let’s dive right in!

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Marketing and Analytics Tools

The agency business is pretty saturated, so instead of waiting for your customers to come to you, use these marketing tools for agencies to ensure you have a steady supply of prospects and leads flowing in.

Don’t forget about analytics tools, which will help you keep track of you (or your client’s!) marketing campaigns, and optimize your efforts for better results.

#1: HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one platform that takes care of your marketing, sales, and service needs.

To get started, I  recommend trying out their free CRM system. The HubSpot CRM gives you a real-time view of your entire sales pipeline on a visual, easy-to-understand dashboard. This means that you can see how many deals your sales reps are currently working on (and gauge how many projects you might be taking on in the upcoming months).

HubSpot provides you with detailed reports, it’s quite easy for you to check out your team’s sales productivity and individual performance.

#2: Agency Analytics

Are you looking for a white label analytics tool? Try Agency Analytics, which bills itself as the “only marketing platform built for agencies”.

This platform allows agencies to monitor their clients’ marketing campaigns in one place. With Agency Analytics, you can automatically generate reports for your clients and allow clients to access a customized dashboard that’s branded with your logo. Why wouldn’t you want it in your stack of agency tools?

#3 LiveSession

Are you struggling with conversion rate optimization? Is the newly designed landing page not delivering the results you want? Do you need more data than just the results of A/B tests?

Check how users interact with your website with LiveSession. Analyze their behavior using this session recording app.

This qualitative analytics tool will allow you to gain in-depth insights into customer behavior, improve the conversion rate, provide better support or debug your application.

#4: Tidio

Tidio is a live chat and chatbot tool for agencies that they can use to increase their website conversions, and generate more leads.

According to statistics, 46% of customers prefer to use live chat to contact a company (as compared to the 29% that prefer email, or 16% who prefer social media).

If your team doesn’t have enough resources to have someone man your chat 24/7, you can also use Tidio’s automated chatbots to generate replies to the simple, straightforward questions that you get from your clients. If you are running a digital agency and have to sell a website, this is a great way to generate potential leads.

#5: UpLead

UpLead is a lead generation platform that allows companies to find and target their ideal prospects.

For instance, say the majority of your agency’s clients are enterprise firms making over $2,000,000 in revenue each year, and these firms tend to employ more than 100 people.

With this in mind, you can search through UpLead’s database of 46M+ business contacts and filter by company revenue and size, to identify prospects that are a good fit. From there on, get your sales team to reach out to these prospects, and pitch your services to them.

#6: Messagely

I  might be biased, but I’d say that Messagely is one of the most helpful customer support tools available in the marketplace.

Like Tido, Messagely also comes with a live chat feature and chatbots. This agency tool allows you to reply to your clients’ questions quickly, without making them wait.

Besides this,  you can also use Messagely to acquire and qualify leads. For instance, you can configure a live chat pop-up on your website to ask your website visitors if they’re interested in learning more about your agency’s services, then trigger pre-determined questions to qualify as website visitors, and identify if they’re a high-quality lead.

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#7: Optimizely

Optimizely is an experimentation platform that allows teams to test and deploy “winning digital experiences”. If you want to generate more leads via your agency’s website, you can also use Optimizely to A/B test your site!

Say your agency is tasked with overhauling your client’s website to increase conversions. With Optimizely, you can conduct A/B tests to gauge whether green call-to-action (CTA) buttons are more effective than red ones, whether a change in messaging will appeal better to consumers, whether you should include a testimonial section on your homepage or leave it out… so much and so forth.

#8: MobileMonkey

MobileMonkey is a multi-channel chatbot platform that enables companies to proactively engage with audiences on their website, Facebook Messenger, SMS text messaging, and other popular web chat applications.

It has in-built chatbot forms, lead magnets and marketing automation tools.

It is the only platform that allows marketers to make Facebook ad bots, SMS bots, and native webchat bots in one place.

#9: JotForm

JotForm is an online form builder that has more than 8 Million users and more than 10,000 ready-to-use form templates for many different industries.

Many agencies from different verticals are using JotForm in order to generate leads and collect feedback from their customers. JotForm has many features that differentiate it from the other form builders in the market, such as a PDF Editor, Mobile Forms, Fillable PDFs, HIPAA compliant electronic signature, and many more.

Also, JotForm is a very easy fit for an agency’s workflow, since it offers many integration options with widely-used productivity tools such as Google Drive, Trello, HubSpot, and many more!

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#10: GetResponse

Not all of your leads will be ready to start working with your agency right away. For the ones who aren’t, that’s where GetResponse comes in.

GetResponse email marketing software allows you to create great-looking emails to engage and nurture your leads. The key is to ensure you’re top-of-mind so that they reach out to you when they’re ready to buy.

Social Media Tools

If your agency isn’t on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms, you’re missing out on a great way to reach out to potential clients. It’s time to rectify that with these social media tools.

#11: Buffer

Do you know that 74% of people with a high-income are actively using Facebook? It’s an absolute must for agencies to be active on Facebook or other social media platforms. That’s where Buffer comes in.

In short,  Buffer is a social media management platform that allows you to plan and publish your content to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, from a single dashboard. Buffer also comes with a social media calendar so you can have a quick overview of all the posts you’ve got lined up, and identify and fill in any gaps. It is one tool that you will find in every list of social media agency tools because it’s features are essential for social media marketing agencies.

#12: Social Status

Social Status is social media analytics and reporting tool perfect for agencies who need a multi-channel analytics dashboard for all their clients. Social Status supports Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Agencies can easily group client profiles and pages, including Facebook ad accounts, plus they can also do a competitor analysis and track influencer marketing campaigns too.

Reports can be white-labeled and completely customized to suit different reporting needs. Boardroom-ready reports can be exported to a range of formats including CSV, PDF, PowerPoint, and Google Slides.

#13: Rebrandly

Rebrandly is a link management platform to help agencies create trackable links. It’s a great alternative to Bitly. Both services offer shortened URL links, however Bitly links are not trackable or private, and cannot be customised. They offer a great platform to help agencies understand which communications are driving the most traffic. This includes individual link statistics, data reports, customized analytics, and Google Analytics integration.

Some of the main differences between Rebrandly & Bitly include the ability to use multiple custom domain names, change the destination URL of links at any time, set private/public link statistics, and delete links. Instead of shortening URLs, you can utilise this tool to build a branding strategy.

#14: Promo Republic

The Promo Republic is another great social media marketing tool without which our list of agency tools might have been incomplete.

Like Buffer, you can use the Promo Republic to plan, manage and schedule your social media posts. For agencies, Promo Republic also offers a white label product, so you can get your social media management software that your clients can log into, branded with your agency’s logo.

#15: Planable

Next up, we have Planable, a tool that helps you polish your social media posts to perfection before you publish them.

With Planable, you can preview your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts within a single interface, and tweak them till you’re satisfied. Team members can leave comments directly and tag other team members to collaborate, making the vetting process smooth and fast.

#16: Social Champ

Social Champ is a social media management tool that makes it possible to work with a fully functional, feature-rich, and exceptionally integrated platform. You can automate your accounts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google Business Profile, and Pinterest from a single dashboard. Schedule posts in bulk, organize content in a calendar, track posts for an in-depth analysis, or engage with your target audience seamlessly.

With a wide range of plans, Social Champ is suitable for startups, entrepreneurs, or growing marketing agencies. These start from a robust, limitless Free Plan to three market-compatible pricing plans. 

SEO Tools for Agencies

Say Company A decides that they want to engage a digital agency to help them plan and execute an upcoming campaign. To find an agency to work with, they’d probably search for “best agencies in {location}” on Google, look at a few options, and narrow it down from there.

The moral of the story? SEO is important, so use these SEO tools to improve your agency’s online presence!

#17: Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most well-known tools in the SEO space. This tool allows you to uncover your competitor’s keywords, and grow your website’s search traffic.

By using Ahrefs to fine-tune your SEO strategy, you can get more visibility and bring in more organic traffic to your website. If you offer SEO services to your clients, you can also use Ahrefs to perform a competitive analysis for them, and come up with an action plan for them to outrank their competitors.

#18: SEMrush

Just like Ahrefs, SEMrush is another highly-regarded SEO tool. This tool allows you to identify a specific website or company’s best-performing keywords so that you can fine-tune your agency’s keyword strategy.

Besides,  if you run paid campaigns (such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads) for your agency, you can also use SEMrush to research ad keywords and creatives, and benchmark your PPC costs.

#19: RocketLink

With RocketLink, you can grow your audience by adding retargeting pixels, CTAs, and custom domains to any links. Stop sending visitors away to other websites by sharing external links online – keep in touch with them whenever they go.

To increase CTR you can customize domains and the links’ thumbnails – modify URL’s preview title, description, image and personalize links on social media to attract more users. You can also use RcketLink as a URL shortener, even with added UTM tags.

Project Management Tools for Agencies

Project management tools are important for any company, but they’re especially crucial for agencies, where there are a hundred things going on at once. These tools help to align everyone on your team and increase team productivity and efficiency.

#20: Airtable

If you use Excel or Google Sheets to track your projects and progress, try Airtable, i.e. Excel on steroids.

With Airtable, you can set the status of each task, tag your tasks according to priority, add due dates, create a field for approval,  and more. If you don’t like the traditional “Grid” view (which looks like an Excel spreadsheet), there’s also a calendar view, a Kanban-style view, and more.

#21: Trello

Trello is another project management tool that makes it easy for you to collaborate with your team members on projects.

You can start by creating different cards for each project, then slot in your cards under different columns. (For example, you might have a column for “Pending invoice”, “Pending client brief”, “Pending first draft”, and so on).

Within each card, you can add due dates and checklists, assign and tag team members, add attachments and more.

#22: monday.com

Like Airtable and Trello, you can use monday.com to manage your projects more effectively.

Other than the standard functions which I ’ve already mentioned above  (due dates, checklists, assigning tasks, etc), monday.com also allows you to create reports to track task progress and resource allocation. You can even build and customize dashboards to get a better overview of everything that’s going on.

#23: Teamwork

Teamwork is a feature-rich Project Management platform which is simple to use, but powerful when you need it.

Including all the standard features, Teamwork also has some very powerful innovative features such as their Workload feature. This allows you to track individual team member workloads easily for more efficient task management and distribution. You can also track project progress through dashboards, board views and project health status updates. They also allow unlimited client users for free which is ideal for agencies.

#24: Forecast.app

If resource planning in an agency is a pain in the neck for you, then it’s time to check out forecast.app.

Forecast is a robust project and resource management software that goes far beyond task management and allows you to manage all agency operations in one platform.

It will support you in running processes from quote to invoice and unify cross-functional teams around the same goal to deliver on target.

#25: Indy

Indy is an adaptive, all-in-one management software that allows freelancers and small businesses to track everything from proposals to payments. Indy streamlines organization and time management, letting you focus on your work.

The platform features a library of template proposals and contracts to make getting clients easier. The task tracking system lets you break projects into individual tasks, assigning each one a due date or category to keep you on track. As you work, the time tracker tool logs time spent on each task, making it easy to switch between projects.

When it’s time to get paid, Indy generates a detailed invoice right from the time tracking tool. With other tools such as Profiles, Drive, and Contracts, Indy’s features make it a versatile and reliable addition to any creative team.

#26: HeySpace

HeySpace is a project management and communication platform designed for working in teams. Like most other project management tools, it also offers multiple views, and offers integrations for third-party apps.

This collaboration software has a totally free version for small teams and a premium plan dedicated to more demanding projects. HeySpace offers a 14-days free trial to see how a premium space works.

#27: ProofHub

ProofHub serves as a centralized hub for seamless collaboration and building efficient workflows in agencies. This tool adapts to the agency’s growing needs and ensures seamless growth of both the project size and team members.

You can plan and schedule resources, delegate tasks, track time precisely, and generate custom field reports on this platform with an in-depth analysis. With integrations to invoicing software, you get accurate and timely billing. 

Also, it lets you share progress updates and reports with your clients right on the platform. 

You can add as many users as you want when your agency starts to grow, and team members increase. Lastly, ProofHub’s flat pricing comes in as the icing on the cake and ensures easy scalability.

Messaging Tools

Messaging tools aren’t just about, well, messaging – they do so much more than that. With these tools, you can video call your team members, share files easily, and more, making it easier for you to collaborate on your projects.

#28: Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger is a business communication platform that offers all the standard communication features, including instant messaging, video calling, file sharing, desktop sharing, and more.

If you’re collaborating with team members (or freelancers) working from across the globe, Troop’s video calling and desktop sharing features will come in handy. You can also add other vendors or customers to be part of your organization so that they can communicate with you more effectively.

#29: Slack

Regardless of whether you’re working remotely or not, Slack is perhaps the most well-known team messaging tool available, and that’s for good reason. The tool allows you to set up multiple channels for team members to discuss specific projects or topics, making it easier for everyone to collaborate.

#30: Chanty

Chanty is an AI-powered team chat app that helps teams communicate and collaborate better.

The app comes with several cool features: you can share and view YouTube, Coub, GIF and social media content within the app, pin important messages and updates, and send code snippets to your team. Chanty also allows you to turn any message into a task to keep track of your deliverables better.

#31: Zapier

If you use a ton of different agency tools and apps, and you’re spending too much time exporting/importing data and toggling between your apps, here’s Zapier to the rescue.

In a nutshell, Zapier helps to connect your apps and automate workflows, so that you can do more with less. For instance, once you’ve connected your email marketing platform (eg Mailchimp, ConvertKit, SendInBlue) to your Dropbox account, you can set up a rule to automatically copy and add attachments you receive via email to your Dropbox.

Scheduling Tools

Traditionally, scheduling meetings is a huge pain. Thankfully, these scheduling tools will do all the heavy lifting for you, and minimize the unnecessary back and forth.

#32: Calendly

If it takes five emails to schedule a single meeting with your client, you’re doing it wrong. Instead, use Calendly to set up your meetings with zero fuss.

How does this work? Just indicate your availability, then send a Calendly link to your client so that they can book a meeting with you. You can also integrate Calendly with Google, Outlook, Office 365 or iCloud calendar so that it automatically syncs and takes note of your existing appointments.

#33: YouCanBook.Me

YouCanBook.me is another scheduling tool that takes the pain out of arranging client meetings.

Like Calendly, you can integrate YouCanBook.Me with your calendar to get it to sync your appointments. The tool automatically detects timezones to ensure that everyone sees the right times, and you can use it to customize and send confirmation, reminders and follow-up messages to your clients.

#34: HubSpot Meetings

HubSpot Meetings helps you schedule your appointments faster.  It comes with several meeting options for added flexibility.

If your client needs to meet with several members of your team, send them a group meeting link which allows them to invite multiple people to the meeting.

If your account managers work on multiple accounts, and you don’t have a dedicated manager for each client, send across a round-robin meeting link so that your prospect or client can meet with the person whose schedule best fits with theirs.

#35: Harmonizely

You can use Harmonizely to schedule a meeting and avoid unnecessary emails and save your precious time. Harmonizely can be integrated with the most popular calendars, including Google Calendar, iCloud and other CalDAV solutions.

What makes it stand out of the digital crowd is the fact that Harmonizely also supports calendars such as Zimbra, Zoho, FastMail, Nextcloud. You can integrate Harmonizely with Zoom to generate a unique video conference link for every meeting and control your calendar, thanks to notifications from Slack informing about new appointments.

Creative Tools

Every agency does some sort of creative work for their clients, which is where these creative tools come in useful. Need to write more effective copy, design beautiful graphics, or put together short text videos for your clients? We’ve got you covered.

#36: Hemingway

If your agency creates blog posts, ebooks, or different types of content for clients, you’ll want to bookmark Hemingway, an app that helps increase the readability of your writing.

Hemingway highlights areas where you can improve your writing, including overly long/complex sentences, use of passive voice, adverbs and weakening phrases, and more. It’s easy for you to edit your copy to be more impactful.

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#37: Canva

Canva is the go-to tool for marketers or designers who want to create beautiful graphics to use online or offline. Canva comes with an easy-to-use drag and drop editor, and also provides you with thousands of templates in several categories, including:

• Social media graphics
• Presentations
• Flyers
• Newsletters
• Invitations

#38: Venngage

Venngage is an infographic tool that lets users create infographics in three easy steps. All you have to do is choose a template, add charts and visuals, and customize your design.

Besides infographics, you can also use Venngage to create posters, promotions and other materials to share on your clients’ social channels.

#39: Typito

Need to create short videos to use on your clients’ social media pages? There’s no need to hire a whole production crew to create those videos from scratch – just use Typito instead.

With Typito, you can upload your clips to use, or draw one from the tool’s 600,000+ high-quality images and 200+ motion graphic templates. You can also choose from 20+ formats and aspect ratios to optimize your video format for whichever social media platform you’re posting to.

Read More on Our Best Agency Web Design Tools

Website Tools:

Agencies need to create, manage and analyze websites for their clients and to do all this they need a set of tools that it easier to perform all these tasks. Here are some of the website tools that agencies use.

#40: WordPress

You’ll need WordPress to help you in creating, managing, and collaborating with a team when it comes to site building packages. It’s a versatile content management system (CMS) that comprises layouts for ecommerce, blogs, and even news sites!

So what makes WordPress so great? It’s open-source which makes it great for customizations and third-party hosting. Furthermore, WordPress gives you as an end-user complete control from front/back end integrations, database content,  UI/UX design aesthetics, and search engine optimization.

You can pick a reliable WordPress hosting here and start building straight from the get-go. WordPress has global meetups in more than 800 cities every month, so if you’re a WordPress user, you’re among the popular crowd!

#41: Elementor

Elementor is a WordPress page builder plugin that is an all-in-one solution if you wish to control every aspect of your web design from one place. You’ll get picked from multiple visual designs that are created to cater to specific user experiences, through specific user interface principles.

With Elementor, you can fit easily anywhere in the WordPress ecosystem whether its a plugin or a theme. You’ll have more than 80 design elements at your disposal, along with a popup builder through which you can start designing amazing WordPress popups to enhance your website visitor’s experience.

#42: Cloudways

Need to set up a website for your client? Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that makes it quick and easy for agencies to get websites up and running. Thousands of agencies around the world trust Cloudways.

With Cloudways’ managed hosting for agencies, you don’t need to worry about backing up your clients’ sites or looking for a Content Delivery Network (CDN). The platform comes with managed security, automated backups, built-in CDN and best of all, 24/7/365 Customer Support. You can get a website up and running in a matter of minutes.

#43: WooRank

If you’re looking for a way to improve your website ranking, WooRank is a great place to gain insights. You’ll have to enter your website’s URL in the designated input area. WooRank comprises of the following features:

• White Label Report
• SEO Tools
• Competition Analysis
• Continuous Tracking
• Intuitive Dashboard
• Backlink Analysis
• Website Review

The best part of using WooRank is that you can sync Google Analytics with your account here and get smarter insights about your website. Additionally syncing Google search console can be a great way to find out about keywords and how well SEO optimized your web page is.

#44: Analyze My Website

Just as the name states, AnalyzeMyWebsite is a great auditing tool to check your website’s performance. This tool helps audit webpage performance, security protocols, user experience, and search engine optimization.

Just plug in the details of your client’s website URL and the email address where you want to receive the report and within two days, you’ll know what direction to focus on when it comes to your client’s website. AnalyzeMyWebsite earns by recommending tools that you can use to improve your website. Thus, you’re likely to know more about popular products and services that not only help you complete tasks but make these tasks fun, easy, and time-saving.

Miscellaneous tools

To wrap things up, we’re throwing in a few miscellaneous tools that don’t fit into any of the above categories but are useful nonetheless.

#45: TeamBuzz

Your agency needs to work like a lean, mean, well-oiled machine. How do you do that? By making sure that everyone’s views are heard, using Teambuzz.

Teambuzz makes it easy for team members to provide real-time peer-to-peer feedback, and share any ideas and suggestions that they might have. With this tool, you can build a culture of appreciation and motivate everyone in your agency to do their best.

#46: Proposify

Proposify helps sales teams send, create, and track processes such as proposals, contracts, and agreements digitally. There are plenty of reusable templates and interactive features that can impress a potential client.

You can integrate this with SalesForce, which allows your sales reps to create sales documentation without leaving the CRM.

#47: Xtensio

Xtensio is a communications and strategy platform that enables the creation, sharing, collaboration, and presentation of reports, proposals, or any documents that a business or team needs. It is a great tool that helps thousands of agencies, consultants, entrepreneurs, and even educators to streamline their workflow through living documents called “folios”.

#48: Agency Vista

Agency Vista allows you to generate more qualified leads by connecting your marketing agency with businesses that are actively searching for the services you offer. It is completely free to sign up and you’ll gain an awesome looking profile that highlights key information about your business. If you’ve been struggling to rank in search or are in continual PPC bidding wars – then Agency Vista is the ideal network to join.

#49: MoversTech

MoversTech combined the experience and support of moving industry professionals and built an all-in-one software for managing and tracking the day-to-day operations of moving businesses. This comprehensive moving company CRM is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses oversee tasks and activities of customers as well as employees.

With its optimal integration options, MoversTech CRM acts as a dedicated account manager that is accessible on all devices and easy to navigate, with an intuitive dashboard tailored to the specific needs of professional movers. This centralized and productive system is perfect for managing a coordinated sales pipeline as well as storing relevant data such as jobs, invoices, claims, correspondence with customers, quote calculations, reports, etc.

Tools Recommended by Agencies

We asked agency owners, managers, and executive recruiters about the tools they use at their agency to improve workflows, automate tasks, or better client management. Here is the list of agency tools they shared with us.

Eric Siemek, Director of Search at Youtech

Tools they use at Youtech:

• Google Analytics: If not one of the most important CRO tools we use is Google Analytics. Utilizing this free tool you’re able to see how everyone is interacting on your site, where they’re coming from, what pages are they looking at how long they were on the page for, etc. Google Analytics allows you to see how users are engaging with your content in every way possible. We utilize this data to see what the most popular pages are, how our funnels are working, the most popular areas and acquisitions traffic is coming from. It helps you dig into your data and further optimize your site for conversions.
  
• Google Optimize: In my opinion, the best A/B testing tool out there. Google optimize allows you to A/B test everything and anything on your website while connecting back into your Google Analytics for even further data analysis. Run a test to see if a green add to cart button works better then a red add to cart. When running the tests you can see which versions had how many sessions, conversions, and the probability of which version will perform best. If you run a service-based company or e-commerce this tool is great for A/B testing everything on the site.

Brogan Renshaw, Director at Firewire Digital

Tools they use at Firewire Digital:

• ahrefs:  We use ahrefs to explore for new link opportunities for clients and ourselves. It is basically impossible to overstate how much we use ahrefs for within our agency from link building to content creation and everything in between.
  
• Grammarly: All of our staff use Grammarly when writing emails to clients and website content. Grammarly helps create a high level of writing including grammar checking, spell checking and readability.
  
• Trello: Trello provides tools to define projects and their requirements, and includes a digital dashboard where you can create, organize and prioritize actions. We use it everyday to assign and track the tasks of all staff. The card system employed allows team members to interact and collaborate with each other on projects.
  

Tim Gerst, Owner of Thinkswell

Tools they use at Thinkswell:

• Monday: Internally, we use Monday for project management. Our Director of Project Management, Afton is able to look at all projects at a 10,000 feet level and then dive in as well. We’re able to quickly see what’s needed from each person on the team and ensure we’re delivering items to clients by the deadlines.
• Slack: Our team communicates via Slack internally so that we can keep conversations in each channel – focusing our attention on a topic at a time. This helps us from having to have multiple side-bar conversations about projects.
  

Darcy Guello, Owner of Guello Marketing

Tools they use at Guello Marketing

• Canva: A great tool for preliminary graphic design and concepts. We use this for logo concepts, social media posts, and brochure designs. The final product isn’t always high enough quality for web or print, so we give the design to a professional graphic designer to get the final products we need. The tool is very easy to use and intuitive and helps us keep our graphic design costs down for our clients by getting approvals before we go to the higher cost of a graphic designer.
• Gsuite: We use Gsuite for document sharing with our marketing teams, emails using our own domain name, and lots of storage for photos, files, documents and emails. This saves us a lot of time and is less expensive than any other email provider with the same or similar services.

Anjana Wickramaratne, Social Media and SEO Manager at Active Digi Solutions

Tools they use at Active Digi Solutions:

• Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest is a great research tool for us digital marketing agency as it provides all the relevant and accurate information about the keywords, backlinks and competition backgrounds. This tool saves us valuable time on research and has been using it for quite a bit of time now with no compliments.
• Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows us to monitor and execute out SMM strategies all under one place for all social media platforms. This tool is a huge time saver for us and is very good at social listening as well.
• ActiveCampaign: ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one platform for our email marketing, marketing automation, and sales CRM software. It helps us engage with our contacts with welcome emails, trigger campaigns, sales follow-ups, and more. With countless data-driven automation, we can make sure that we never miss an opportunity with a potential lead.

Yasmine Khater, Founder of Sales Story Method

Tools they use at Sales Story Method:

• Get Harvest: This helped track time my employees across the region based on time allocation and projects they were working on. This gave me visibility to forecast when we would be underresourced and when we undercharged for projects. This helped us adjust our offerings once we were able to properly document how long things took to
  get done.
• Miro: This is a great collaboration tool, helps me to collaborate with my team more efficiently, it has an online collaborative whiteboarding platform to bring teams together, anytime, anywhere.
• Schedule Once: One of the time leaks in an agency is scheduling meetings, so this handy tool helps us schedule all client meetings. This has taken hours off my calendar.

Michael Chammas, Founder of Makro Agency

Tools they use at Makro Agency:

• Loom: It is a tool that my whole team uses on a daily basis. It is a chrome extension that with one click of a button can record you, the screen or both. It the best way to get your message across and will replace any lengthy emails or unnecessary calls. Just record, save, copy paste the link loom creates for you, send it to anyone to view.
• Hubspot: Hubspot is a great tool to create email templates, snippets and much more right from your Gmail making client communications and repetitive emails easy to manage. With their chrome extension, you can also track if your client has opened your email or not and there is less guesswork to when you should follow up.
• Databox: Databox is powerful and easy to use reporting software. The reports look great and we are able to embed the reports to a private page on our website so that our clients can visit their reporting page and always have an up to date report.

Jeff Moriarty, Founder of JMoriartyMarketing

Tools they use at JMoriartyMarketing:

• Harvest: Time Tracker: It is an easy tool to keep track of our hours working for clients. Easy reporting and management.
• Slack: Very popular, makes it extremely easy to work with my associates which are all around the world.
• Google Data Studio: This is a tool for the digital marketing industry, which allows me to create customized reports that clients can access from anywhere and see all the data they want.

Quentin Aisbett, Founder of OnQ Marketing

Tools they use at OnQ Marketing:

• SEMRush: We’re an SEO-focused agency and operating without the use of one of the key platforms would be unimaginable. To the point that not using a platform such as SEMRush would completely kill our business model because it would significantly add to the time required to our job. Not only does it make our jobs easier – It makes us better.
  
• Zapier: For the uninitiated, Zapier helps you to sync different tools and platforms to automate tasks. The role it plays for us as an agency and for our clients is never underestimated by my team. Like SEMRush it saves time and allows us to produce unexpected solutions that makes us look amazing.
  
• Canva: OK so nothing beats having a great designer ready to create custom designs when you need. But occasionally for us, when we need something that doesn’t necessarily require us to interrupt our designer’s current workload, then Canva is an awesome solution. It allows us to get work out quicker and saves us a ton of time.
  

Tihana Drumev, Sr, Content Marketing Executive of Best Response Media

Tools they use at Best Response Media:

• Monday.com: Monday allows us to create real-time project trackers and boards that are much clearer and visible to the client. With Monday, you save a lot of time, as you can create the boards and invite external guests quite quickly as, for example, you would need by creating intricate plans on Google Sheets. You can create private internal boards for internal tracking as well as duplicating the board and inviting external guests to allow clients to accurately follow the progress and give visibility on any blockers or bottlenecks.
• Service Desk: Service desks allow us to create a customer-facing Portal where clients can add tickets for support or new build projects. This avoids any manual work for creating tickets and trying to keep track of progress and clients asking for updates. They can clearly see the ticket progress, its status, add any comments and attachments. It has a clear trail of communication and allows First line support to visualize and work on high priority tickets when coming through. Service desk allows us to work smarter and focus on resolving the issue or making any changes rather than having to spend time managing admin tasks.
  
• Slack: Slack is used to communicate with clients on a daily basis effectively. Client facing channels provide access to the business resources at any time during the day, for example, your project manager of first-line support if there is a query or issue that needs checking. It also keeps a paper trail of all communication through the channel history and while it is archived. Any questions or issues can be raised and answered within a matter of minutes rather than waiting for a reply on email.

Closing Thoughts

It’s a major challenge for agencies to create a tech stack which does not only automates their tasks but also help their clients reach their goals. All the above-mentioned agency tools are tried and tested by thousands of agencies and they are really satisfied with the performance of these tools.

If you think there is a tool that I have missed then comment below to let us know.

Note: This article is written in collaboration with Will Cannon. Will is the founder and CEO of B2B prospecting tool, UpLead. With UpLead, you can easily find and reach out to targeted sales prospects, and generate more leads for your company.

** Editor’s Note: This article is edited for clarity.